Brad Wheeler first fought in front of a crowd when he was about 14 years old. It was in boxing, a sport beloved by his father, who was also a skilled soccer player.

Wheeler was more interested in combat sports than life on the soccer field, so he got into the gym from an early age. He didn’t waste any time taking the first of his 12 amateur boxing matches and getting familiar with the feel of the crowd and a strike to the face.

Just like his budding mixed-martial-arts career, Wheeler wanted to learn quickly.

“It has really helped how I get ready for a fight,” Wheeler told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) of his boxing experience translating to MMA.

“For my first three or four fights, I thought it was best to listen to some music to pump me up. But then I realized, ‘You don’t need that.’ I was a little nervous when I first started (boxing), and then when I had my first MMA fight, I wasn’t nervous at all.”

But now, after years of training and already with 11 MMA fights by age 21, Wheeler is feeling a little more pressure to make a move. With a 6-5 record, Wheeler fights Kevin Donnelly Saturday at the MMAjunkie.com-streamed Cage Warriors 44 card with four wins in his previous five fights.

Not one to wait, the resident of Romford, Essex (a large suburb northeast of London) has committed himself to combat sports since he started boxing at age 13. He got interested in MMA not long after and was fighting among the amateurs by 17.

Looking to fight whomever he could, Wheeler began his career against a tough string of opponents while starting 1-3. He has since built his confidence with stronger performances, and now he’s focused on earning more wins.

“Obviously, because of how I started out, my record doesn’t look too good,” Wheeler said. “Now I have a chance to build up some wins and get noticed.”

Early on, a boxer

Wheeler’s family participated in numerous sports. His father was a boxer and a long-time soccer player. A sister was a skilled dancer, and his brother played hockey.

Wheeler didn’t much care for the sports his siblings liked. He was more interested in his father’s history with boxing. He was also a big fan of Jean-Claude Van Damme movies, so he asked if he could try martial arts, too.

He tried kickboxing, jiu-jitsu and tae kwon do. He got into a boxing gym. Without much wrestling in England, boxing is more popular among young kids, which unknowingly prepared Wheeler for his future MMA career.

“It’s mainly because you can compete in it from a younger age,” he said. “You get to deal with the nerves and the preparation and all the things that happen when you compete in front of a crowd. That was big for me.”

By age 15, Wheeler was regularly watching MMA videos online, and he wondered how he could try. He searched for a local gym, and he walked into a crowd of mostly 20-somethings as a 15-year-old.

Eventually, he dropped his other martial-arts interests and moved more energy into MMA. He tried to find as many different types of classes possible to gain more experience.

He had one goal: to fight as soon as possible.

“I like the training, but I wanted to do something with it,” he said. “I just wanted to take the best opportunities I could.”

A quick and difficult start

After two amateur MMA fights at 17, Wheeler took the first professional fight he could get. It just happened to come against an opponent, Mark Adams, who has off to an undefeated start. Adams was the favorite to win the eight-man tournament that Wheeler entered, and Wheeler matched up against him in the first round.

“In the first round, I really showed him a lot of respect, but then I started thinking, ‘I can hang with this guy,'” Wheeler said. “In the second round, I smashed him all over the place, and it was a good fight.”

Wheeler lost by decision, but by the next day, he was getting more offers because of his performance. A little more than a month later, he took on Wesley Murch, another fighter with more experience. Wheeler agreed to fight him without even knowing who he was.

“I took a beating for a good four minutes,” he said.

But Wheeler righted himself and turned things on Murch, scoring a first-round submission victory that made his career much more notable to observers.

Following with more difficult competition, Wheeler started 1-3, but he became known as a fighter who would take on any opponent, no matter his advantage in age or experience.

He committed himself harder. He balances his training with his job at a bakery serving and helping customers. He continues to mix boxing training in with his MMA training, using the variety of his combat-sports background in preparing for his 12th fight.

“My record still isn’t great, but I have a lot of confidence because of the guys I’ve fought,” he said. “Even in the fights I lost, I did well, so I showed I can do this.”

Award-winning newspaper reporter Kyle Nagel is the lead features
writer for MMAjunkie.com. His weekly “Fight Path” column focuses on the
circumstances that led fighters to a profession in MMA. Know a fighter
with an interesting story? Email us at news [at] mmajunkie.com.

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